
Through The Eye(s): Centering Text and the Voice in Co-Compositional Percussion Practice
Bonnie Whiting will perform excerpts from Through The Eye(s): an extractable cycle of pieces for speaking/singing percussionist, co-composed by Eliza Brown, Whiting, and nine musicians/writers incarcerated at the Indiana Women's Prison. Co-authors include Whittney (CoCo) Bales-Malone, Ashley Strong, Marjorie Woods, Ingrid Swinford, Char’Dae Avery, LaDawn Johnson, Dawnetta Taylor (Shelton), Lara Campbell, Amaris Rose Bunyard, and Joyce (Potter) Hawkins. Our co-compositional model is centered on texts generated by the participants, many of whom did not initially identify as musicians. Living with percussion instruments, found objects gathered in the classroom, and original texts became a powerful catalyst for highly individualized creative activity. This project centers the perspectives/artistic contributions of these women and the collaboration functions as epistemic reparations for the injustices incarcerated people experience. While this can manifest in many ways, in the realm of arts education, we use creative expression as a space for incarcerated students to develop hermeneutic frames for their experience – that is, to shape their own narratives – and provide platforms for the creative work of incarcerated people to enter the public sphere with full authorial attribution. Looking ahead to new futures in not just percussion, but in contemporary performance and creation, Whiting and Brown are committed to challenging and transforming the process and infrastructure through which a piece of music is created. The conditions of this work's production was shaped intentionally, so as to not unwittingly replicate the inequities that inhere in the field as historically structured within the carceral setting. DURATION is flexible: 12' (suggested); option for 8'-30' of material.



